For some reason, confessions are on my mind today. And as a result, I have a confession to make.

Okay, several confessions.

This isn’t easy for me, so I appreciate your patience as I try to clear my conscience.

Confession 1: I have commented using a pseudonym. One of the things I’ve always been proud of with this blog is the open commenting system I have. I of course understand that since my comment system is totally open, it’s a snap to impersonate somebody. And I have done that myself on at least two different occasions that I can remember. Both times were to call attention to what I considered a clever inside joke that nobody had noticed, saying that my reference was very funny.

I should note, however, that most every single blogger in the world does this. And in fact, it’s my understanding that all of Jill Homer’s comments are written by Jill Homer herself. So in comparison, I’m squeaky clean, bogus-comment-wise.

Confession 2: I have plagiarized Dave Barry. I used to love Dave Barry’s column. One of his signature phrases is “…and I am not making this up….” I have written that exact phrase in my blog probably a dozen times, and each time I do I am consciously plagiarizing Dave Barry.

But my problem is hardly even worth mentioning if you compare me to practically every person who has ever lived, each of whom plagiarizes Seinfeld twenty or thirty times per day. In fact, I’m practically a saint in comparison, when you think about that “and I am not making this up” is a fairly generic, non-comedic preface to the actual comedic phrase that will follow. Saying, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” or “No soup for you,” however, steals the entire comic parcel.

And anyone who knows Dug knows that he has never actually constructed an original sentence in his life; every single thing he ever writes is a reference to something else.

Shame on all of you!

Confession 3: Even though I’ve said I’ll never do another Ironman, I can’t help but thinking about doing another Ironman. It’s true; I’ve thought several times about what would happen if I actually trained for the run. I think I could finish an hour faster. And if I started the race at 150 pounds instead of 163, I would have finished both the run and bike courses faster.

But if you think I’m bad, you should hear The Runner. She — and I would like to remind you that she was the one who originally said that we would never do the Ironman ever again — has already started thinking about the next triathlon she wants to do, and has even hinted that maybe sometime this autumn we ought to go try swimming again.

Confession 5: I drink chocolate milk straight from the jug. I tell my kids that it is absolutely forbidden for them to drink straight from the jug, but when nobody is around, I do it all the time. And not just because I’m lazy, either. I do it because I like it. I like lifting the big ol’ gallon container of chocolate milk to my lips and chugging, knowing that I can drink and drink and drink, and there’s still very little chance that I’ll finish off the container I’m drinking from.

And it feels manly to drink from the jug, too.

But if you think I’m disgusting, you should have seen this dog — named Fred — a friend of mine had when I was a kid. He totally licked his balls.

I mean the dog did, not the kid.

Confession 6: I deleted confession 4 because it was too personal and embarrassing. But you know what? I hear — and I am not making this up — that Bike Snob NYC deletes personal details from his blog all the time.

PS: Feel free to use the comments section today to confess something, but only on the condition that you then go on to blame others for doing the same and / or worse.

PPS: Is there anyone else who thinks that the “Trust But Verify” blog ought to have a few new updates, in light of recent events?

PPPS: The contest to support the Breakaway from Cancer initiative and win a jersey or an Amgen Tour of California merchandise pack is still going on. We’ve raised just about $2000 so far. Read here for details, and go here to donate.

110 Comments

I have a confession to make. I quote Seinfield on a semi regular basis. Every time I have to stop quickly at a red light, I throw my arm across my wife’s chest and say “stop short, that’s my move.” I feel a little dirty admitting I actually quote Seinfield. I think I will go take a shower now.

I have two confessions…I too have used “No soup for you!” because of a local establishment containing a similar character. And I know of a cousin who has licked, well you know. I was not present to this, but I heard about it later. He was a little kid, and I don’t know what possessed him to do it?! Is that TMI?

I suppose getting busted for all of those things first, then vehemently denying it for years while at the same time collection money from gullible readers for your defense is too much to ask, eh, Fatty? BTW, with your revelations, I am disgusted at the bike blogging community and that kid who licked his own balls.

For years, I have claimed that our house was a house full of silent sleepers. No snoring, coughing, or sneezing at all. I am tired of living the lie. I used to snore for a short time in the late 90’s. But my wife is even louder and still does it.

I CONFESS that i am sick to death already of hearing the worm mentioned on Eurosport, that charlatan is tempting me to stop watching as it is getting more attention than those who are struggling through 200+ km in the worst continous conditions i have seen at the Giro outside the Dolomites!
I confess that i am still in Austria suffering and thus not motivated to head south and join the action, instead i have added to the blog! Just watched a prat try to spray water on a Lampre rider & “Spiderman(lookalike) is going for a trot on the Barbotta.
I Confess if i was a rider i would have done a Cadel on the water thrower, Karpets m/while is enjoying celebrity once again

My confession is that during the 100 Miles of Nowhere I had my wife monitor the mini fridge in our pantry to ensure that the beer stayed cold incase of a power outage. Then I partook in a beer transfusion afterwards.

I confess that I won’t watch a bicycle race unless Phil and Paul are calling it. I confess that I enjoy Jill Homer’s blog and think she is a good writer – even the comments, ha! ;-) I confess to only having read Dugs blog a few times (sorry). I confess that I don’t like and don’t read BikeSnobNYC (not sorry about this).

I also confess that I could care less about Floyd Landis – he’s a dweeb. I also confess that even if Lance Armstrong doped and Johann assisted – I don’t care. Doesn’t change my opinion of either one of them as being top notch in their sport and top notch philanthropists.

I confess that I buy Swedish Fish for the kids treat, and then eat them all my self. But that’s not as bad as my Canadian brother who eats a large bag of wine gums in one sitting. Actually, it’s about the same.

Further confession (prompted by Jim Sheafer’s confession): I biked to work today and went to the Bike to Work rally and took lots of freebies and even some water and an apple, even though this is the first day I’ve commuted by bike since November. I tell everyone I haven’t been commuting by bike because of my husband’s schedule, but that’s a big lie. I just haven’t felt like it.

Hey Fattie – long time reader who went AWOL for awhile . . . decided to stop back on a Friday. Will be following the blog closely if you’re serious about another Iron Man run – I’m gearing up for a straight-up marathon this November & then an Ironman a year later.

Hell, I often comment of both sides of issues here in the comments section. I’ve even berated myself for stupid positions I’ve taken in an earlier comment. I can’t be blamed, however, I only do what the voices tell me. (Thanks for introducing me to them, Fatty!)

Fatty, I don’t know if these confessions are good for your employment situation. If you keep this up you could find yourself watching the freezers at 7-Eleven making sure the ice cream and slurpees don’t melt with some guy named Floyd.

Fatty (aka wes) good one ! Ever wonder why dznuts makes ‘bliss’ ? Ever forgot your chapstix on a long ride…not that here’s anything wrong with that.
my confession…I once house sat a guy’s house for a week and went through his entire transfusion supply.
I was so pissed at his cheap choice that I split it with his dog. The dog came down with a severe case of uromicyctosis.

I confess that while on a run earlier this week, while running with two women, they were kicking my butt while running on some hills and I started to make up excuses in my head on how I could stop the pain without crying uncle. I even imagined tripping on a made up crack in the sidewalk and telling them to go ahead. I have done this only the one time of course. Fatty has done it over and over again and even written about it, so I guess I am okay….

Why would I confess? Confession is good for the soul, but I sold my soul to the Devil in exchange for awesone guitar playing ability. (I wern’t using it.) So, being as how it would just benefit the Devil, I can see no good reason to confess.

Besides, Kiss, AC/DC, Zepplin, all those guys – they sold their souls for FAR less money.

I donated — mostly because everytime we passed each other on the run at St. George when I would yell “Go Fatty!”, you never punched me in the face. I smiled when I would say it just because. You were a good sport about it and all.

I confess I made the whole Tour de France up. Lance, Johan, Levi, Floyd, Fabian, Bjarne, were all in on it. Even Greg Lemond went along at first.

But in my defense it was never my idea to make it as elaborate a hoax as it’s become. My idea was to send out flyers, put a couple of ads in the local paper and take entry fees. I figured I’d send out a t-shirt and map and then just not show up at the start and pocket the profits.

It was all Johan and Lance’s idea to fake the 100+ year history of the event. They also came up with the idea of other “races” in Italy and Spain. Johan thought it would be cool to have some fictitious one-day races. Did you all really think people could ride bikes over 200 year old cobblestone roads? Come on, it’s all done with green screen and iMovie. Every year as computers got better we’d try to top the year before. That’s why there are just black and white pictures of the early years and now we can fake HD video.

We also thought the crazy time trial bikes we came up with in the last few years would give it away. But the bigger we made the stories the more people were fooled and followed the event.

Johan and Lance will deny everything. I have no proof. I would send letters to the UCI, USADA, and WADA but we made those up too.

I’ve worked with Dave Barry on a couple of occasions. Don’t worry. He would find it funny that someone who competes in the Ironman would proudly call himself Fatty and that this same guy would enjoy reading his column.

i confess in 43 yrs of working in broadcasting i only remember one instance where network cut away from a major sporting event and that was nbc cut away from football to heidi i confess i had nothing to do with it versus network take note

The problem with you, Elden, is that you’re a damn clean live-r. I believe you did list most of your primary failings, and that’s why I like you.

Were I to make a confession of my major failings, people would be appalled. The way I uncotnrollably swill Hammer Perpetuum straight from the jug, making my face look like I just ate a lime powder donut; the way I secretly give money both to the Scientologists and to the German goverment, just to encourage them to duke it out in a religious freedom / fraud enforcement version of BumFights; the way I kicked Jessica Biel to the curb, breaking her heart and causing her so much agony that she got amnesia and forgot we had ever dated; plus there’s all those hobos I murdered during the last economic downturn in my failed venture to launch a “hobo stew” competitor to Dinty Moore’s excellent beef by-product product.

Nope. You’re a paragon of virtue, and that’s why I like you.

And by the way, while I’m confessing, I’ll confess for everybody else too, and not that just about everybody in the pro peloton for any length of time between 1991 and 2007 doped, with apparent tacit approval or at least the knowledge of ASO, UCI and WADA, and that was part of the cost of staying in the game, and that people who name names get vilified because there’s too many livelihoods, too may businesses, too many important non-profits, and too many good, decent hearted fans relying on bike racing as a bright spot in their life to be able to ackowledge the painful truth and the corruption – and maybe a permanent human inability to deal with evil – that is at the heart of a lot of worldly dealings.

I’m actually serious about the last one though I think I’d rather believe my made-up confession than that. &$%#!!!!!

“And anyone who knows Dug knows that he has never actually constructed an original sentence in his life; every single thing he ever writes is a reference to something else.”

that reminds me of a joke. one i didn’t make up myself. which means, i guess, that i am not making this joke up. not that there’s anything wrong with that.

a guy gets invited by a friend to attend a comedian’s convention. at the “keynote” they have open mic time.

first guy goes up and says “Number 22.” everybody laughs politely. second guy goes up and says “Number 8.” people laugh a little more.

“what’s going on?” asks the guest. “well,” says his comedian friend, “we’re all comedians. we’ve heard all the same jokes for so long, that to save time, we’ve numbered them. so at the convention, we just go up and say the number of the joke.”

just then another guy goes up and says “number 92.” and it brings the house down, everyone laughs and laughs until they cry.

I confess I was still willing to believe Lance was clean after Walsh’s books, Emma O’Reilly’s stories, Betsy Andreu, the taped call with the Oakley rep., his ex-wife’s unwillingness to answer when asked if she ever saw him using PED’s, his threats to take down Greg Lemond, the positive (although six years late) EPO tests from the ‘99 Tour, the positive steroid test from the ‘99 tour (with backdated prescription), his chasing down Simeoni, and the fact that at least 50% of everyone in the top 50 of the past 15 Tours has tested positive or admitted to doping, etc.

However, what is much worse is that there are still people out there who are willing to believe the guy after Landis’ confessions. Sure, Lance had an incredible comeback from cancer and has helped many through his foundation but enough is enough.

Landis may be the world’s biggest jerk, and naming names may not be popular, but that doesn’t mean he’s not telling the truth. I wish more cyclists would name names so that the sport could finally develop even a speck of credibility.

Did I see you yesterday (Thursday) on a flight from Cincinnati to LA? If not, there’s another bald charming cyclist wearing a Mellow Johnny bike shop t-shirt on his way, we hope, to the Tour of California. I didn’t say “hello” because you were texting, I was fighting my way through a crowd of passengers.

I was sitting at the finish line of my first Ironman, eating everything I could get my hands on and chatting with a guy who’d just finished his 13th. He said that signing up for one is more like committing to at least two. At that moment, I was still convinced that if I did another, it would be a few years. I signed up for IMCdA’10 four days later. Right now, I’m telling myself that I won’t do an IM in 2011. Maybe one or two in 2012. But ask me again around July 1.

@Star- I think what they saw was @MattC (a regular poster and Team Fatty San Jose Co Captain). Matt was at the stage today. He made a few signs and was planning to setup at one of the KOM points. Here are the sign descriptions from MattC, “One of them is a large Fatty logo (black circle filled with orange and the black Clydesdale horse), and the sign says “Team Fatty…We’re EVERYWHERE! Powered by Shimano” (in ref to Fatty talking about doing something for Shimano as they keep donating good stuff to our LIVESTRONG cause). Just in case it makes the telecast…you know. Then next banner says “Think Strong, Ride Strong, LIVESTRONG” (the LIVESTRONG is black in a yellow rectangle, the LIVESTRONG Logo). And my final sign says “It’s time to SHACK it up a notch!” and then has all the Shack team riders first names around the border. Lance’s name is in RED (as is the “SHACK” part) and I put a yellow circle around him for his LIVESTRONG cause, and then put a yellow slash thru his name as he has now abandoned.”
Way to go MattC!!! You Rock!

I confess to turning my back on my family and faith because of selfish ambition and a bet over a case of beer, but I didn’t drink it all.

I confess I lied about some things in the past. I confess to lying about not lying.

I confess to not lying when I should have lied. But none of my lies got me into political office.

I confess to being less than forthcoming with my fans, coworkers, judges, sports officials, congressmen, and basically the whole world for money, but nobody got hurt.

Now I’m asking you to believe me. Now I’m in need of more cash. So now I’ve developed a bad case of conscience. Because I think Johan would have paid me since Lance races better when he is angry. TdF will pay me to give them an excuse to un-invite the Shack. The shack will pay me because of the number of times a Shack jersey will appear on network TV. WADA will pay me to be a consultant/informant. The National Hockey Legion will pay me because I can single handedly make a good brawl look more honest. Then to top it all off I’ve got a publisher offering to pay me for my story (Negatively False) and even the possibility of a movie deal (if I work on my fake accent).

Then if all goes well, Lance will pay me to give an emotional retraction and I can move on to round three of the cash rolling in.

So now I’m just asking you to really believe me this time, for now.

PS. I’d like to point out that I did tear up when I talked about my mother. If that is not sincere then what is?

I confess as a cyclist I have used EPO. Of course it was because my hematocrit was in the teens and my Dr prescribed it. But it just kept me from dying. It did not seem to make me delusional or say really stupid stuff like Landis. Maybe he should have stuck to licking his balls instead of sending e-mails.

I confess: I have never even tasted coffee in my entire life.
I confess: I Like Dave Barry’s old columns.
I confess: I often quote The Princess Bride, Spinal Tap, and Anne Coulter.
I confess: I Think LeMond is looking smarter all the time.

I confess to having “bad” thoughts about the car drivers in my neck of the woods. But I understand why me and most of my friends have all nearly been run down this year. I mean we literally have no traffic and wide roads. So obviously there is no room for us all to exist on the road.

I confess to thinking about building a new bike. Even though I just built a really nice one last year and my non biking wife didn’t really understand why I needed THAT bike.

I confess I was feeling quite good about my cycling whilst wearing my fat cyclist top at Florida 70.3 triathlon last weekend. Then I got clipped, hit a traffic cone and went over the handlebars. I got concussion, ruined my helmet and brand new top which I had shipped to the uk.

Now I feel like a pillock. Pride comes before a fall I think they say……

I confess that I was going to confess to using Advil prior to riding, but see that ‘Patrick’ beat me to that confession. So, there is my first mea culpa followed by a you’ra culpa.

I confess to believing in Floyd Landis. But then, I confess to having previously trusted Tyler Hamilton too, so I guess I get both sides of that one.

I confess to slightly exaggerating my ride length, i.e. the cyclometer says I rode ‘13.8 miles’, and I have claimed it was ‘around 20 miles’. But then….okay, maybe I’m the only person to have ever done that. Mmm-hmm.

Alright, since we’re cleaning the soul… I can’t help but be opinionated and want to put my two cents in where is doesn’t belong. I have views and beliefs that I feel everyone should here. Hence, the alyshaisabella.wordpress.com blog, but boy do I not like it when others give me their ideas and I find them stupid. What’s a girl to do

I confess that I say that I can change my tires all by myself, when I actually still need my husband’s help to lever my road tires back on to the rim. (I can do the hybrid tires, really! My roadie is just so stiff!!) I once tried for two and a half hours before I finally gave in.

I’M SO ASHAMED!!

I will go drown my shame in a nice glass of wine now. Or a martini. Martinis are good for shame, right?